In conventional paper making machines paper is produced in the form of a continuous web, which--after having passed the driver section and any platers of the machine--is wound up onto the so called jumbo reel. This consists of a heavy steel cylinder which is capable of carrying wound paper webs having a length of ten thoudsands of meters and a width of about 3 to 10 meters. When the winding of the web onto the jumbo reel has been finished it is necessary to select therefrom a number of test samples in order to make it possible to lay down the quality as well as other properties of the paper produced. Simple tests may be made by the machine operator himself, while more complicated tests have to be accomplished in a laboratory. Irrespective of the testing technique used the selection of the necessary test samples from the wound and roll-shaped paper web, which rests motionless on the jumbo reel, has hitherto been carried out quite simply by letting two operators manually tear off or by means of a knife cut off a strip along the entire machine width (i.e. along the entire length of the wound paper roll). The strip thus torn or cut off may then either be divided into smaller pieces or in its entirety be brought into the test equipment in question. To tear or cut off a strip in the manner described is, however, connected with many disadvantages. Firstly it is a troublesome and ergonomically unfavourable work for the operators to try to extract an expedient strip, which often is very long, from a material which is flabby and cumbersome. In pratice the result usually will be that the extracted strip is more or less sharply battered; what makes the strip unsuitable for certain tests. Further the strip seldom becomes straight, but rather wry or wave-like with irregular borders. When handled in sophisticated test equipment such strips will cause problems. Finally it should be stressed that the necessity of having two operators to carry out the test sample extraction may involve extra costs.